Joshua Sur­tees

E-mails ap­par­ent­ly writ­ten by UNC strat­e­gy ad­vis­ers and sup­port­ers in the me­dia have been leaked to Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) vice chair­man Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, she re­vealed on Thurs­day night.At a packed PNM pub­lic meet­ing in the Croisee, San Juan, Robin­son-Reg­is read out the con­tent of the e-mails, as the crowd jeered and cat­called.

One e-mail ex­change be­tween ra­dio talk show host and ac­tivist Phillip Alexan­der and UNC deputy leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, copies of which were ob­tained by the T&T Guardian, ap­pears to show the me­dia per­son­al­i­ty and pos­si­ble UNC can­di­date for Diego Mar­tin West pitch­ing a po­lit­i­cal tele­vi­sion chat show.

The show pro­posed by Alexan­der, called Equal Time, would be shown at prime time on the state-owned CN­MG tele­vi­sion chan­nel C News and would be a plat­form from which be­lea­guered or dis­graced gov­ern­ment min­is­ters could de­fend them­selves.

The sec­ond e-mail, sent from an ad­dress ap­par­ent­ly be­long­ing to Rod­ney Charles, T&T's UN am­bas­sador, who will work for the UNC as gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign man­ag­er in 2015, was sent to an elite list of UNC strate­gists, sup­port­ers and me­dia as­so­ciates and called for a full-scale sus­tained at­tack on PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­signed to pro­voke him to anger, un­der­mine his per­son­al char­ac­ter and drag down his poll rat­ings.

Prime-time show for min­is­ters

The Alexan­der-Mooni­lal e-mail ex­change took place on the morn­ing of May 31 un­der the sub­ject head­ing "Make this Hap­pen and every­body wins."Alexan­der sug­gests to an undis­closed re­cip­i­ent list, "Every evening from six to sev­en on CN­MG there could be a one-hour show called 'Equal Time' host­ed by yours tru­ly."Mod­elled on Jon Stew­art's The Dai­ly Show, the show, Alexan­der sug­gests, will "take the sting out of the news," us­ing sar­casm and satire.

"The first 15 min­utes of the sec­ond half-hour would be guest-dri­ven," Alexan­der said. "Usu­al­ly some­one in the pub­lic eye (gov­ern­ment min­is­ters un­der at­tack es­pe­cial­ly) that we 'hu­man­ise' with hu­mour and per­son­al fun ques­tions un­til the last bit where we give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­bunk op­po­si­tion mis­in­for­ma­tion."Alexan­der goes on to sug­gest the show would "un­der­mine op­po­si­tion mes­sag­ing in the bi­ased me­dia" and "de­liv­er the li­on's share of the news au­di­ence to C News where the con­tent is more bal­anced..."

Alexan­der re­sponds:Some­one snoop­ing

Af­ter the leaked ex­change was re­vealed by Robin­son-Reg­is and post­ed across PNM so­cial me­dia pages, Alexan­der took to Face­book, sug­gest­ing the PNM was snoop­ing on pri­vate cor­re­spon­dence.Asked whether some­body on his dis­tri­b­u­tion list might have leaked the e-mail, he told the T&T Guardian he had for­ward­ed Mooni­lal's re­sponse to four peo­ple, one of whom was his son and an­oth­er his pro­duc­er. He did not re­veal the names of the oth­er two, but said, "I know for a fact they are of unim­peach­able char­ac­ter."

Roodal Mooni­lal told the T&T Guardian, "I can­not re­call read­ing such an e-mail but Mr Alexan­der is a well-known pro­fi­cient writer and po­lit­i­cal strate­gist."I am very trou­bled by Row­ley's abil­i­ty to clan­des­tine­ly in­ter­cept pri­vate and con­fi­den­tial cor­re­spon­dence."Asked whether there may be a leak with­in the UNC or amongst Alexan­der's peo­ple, Mooni­lal replied, "I be­lieve the PNM has some sys­tem of in­ter­cept­ing e-mails and text mes­sages."

Mooni­lal was then asked whether the con­tent of the sug­gest­ed TV show would be ap­pro­pri­ate for state-fund­ed tele­vi­sion. He replied, "In our fu­ture dis­cus­sion we would dis­cuss pol­i­cy and pay­ing pub­lic or pri­vate me­dia. We pay all. I have a du­ty to keep the PNM in op­po­si­tion and to re­mind peo­ple of the sins of the PNM."

Cam­paign against PNM leader

The oth­er e-mail leaked to Robin­son-Reg­is was ap­par­ent­ly sent by Rod­ney Charles.The e-mail reads, "We pro­pose launch­ing a full-scale at­tack on Kei­th Row­ley come the morn­ing of May 19, 2014, ie, the morn­ing af­ter his ex­pect­ed land­slide vic­to­ry. We ab­solute­ly need to bring down his polling rat­ings. We are there­fore ask­ing you (and all our sup­port­ers) in what­ev­er way you can, to be part of that at­tack."

Charles' sug­ges­tions in­clude re­fer­ring to him as "Row­ley–not Dr Kei­th Row­ley," as­so­ci­at­ing Row­ley's name with short neg­a­tive sound­bites such as "Row­ley is un­fit to lead," and play­ing up the cen­tral themes of the at­tack cam­paign by por­tray­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader as ar­ro­gant, dic­ta­to­r­i­al, tem­pera­men­tal and not a team play­er.

The e-mail con­cludes, "Let us...do what we have to do to bring start (sic) putting KR on the de­fen­sive. He has shown him­self un­able to weath­er sus­tained at­tacks. He be­comes an­gry and in ef­fect a rag­ing bull."Charles pro­posed three weeks of sus­tained at­tacks to take place dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the UNC's an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions, as well as the May 23 trade union march in which the PNM and Row­ley played a promi­nent part.